What to do when you need baby to sleep so that you can get your paid work done?

Are you trying to deliver on paid work (perhaps in front of your computer or laptop) throughout the week, with little support during the day as you care for your baby? Or maybe you're running a small business? You might be very much hoping that you can get your baby into a regular sleep routine, with long blocks of sleep at naptimes, so that you have predictable free time each day to do your paying work. You might feed your baby back to sleep when she wakes, to lengthen the time you've got available.

Being inside the house typically dials babies up. Perhaps you're watching the clock and feeling under pressure to get work done, so you try putting your baby down in the cot as soon as he is dialling up, or immediately after a feed, in the hope he'll sleep. But your baby’s sleep pressure isn’t very high and he cries very loudly from the cot. You're frustrated because it seems you'll never get any work done! Someone tells you that your baby is ‘resisting sleep’ and your desperation climbs even higher. The nights are getting worse and worse. You feel locked in horrible sleep battles with your baby.

I have often seen many women struggle with this scenario over the years. The stress of it can quite severely impact upon their well-being. If only baby would sleep!

If you are in this situation, I would like to make suggestions that might be hard to hear. Many folks will tell you that if you only try hard enough, you'll be able to train your little one's sleep, so that you can get your paid work done.

But unfortunately, the latest infant sleep research shows that creating daytime sleep routines doesn't work for most babies, though it might work for the small proportion of babies who have high sleep needs. If you're a primary carer and you need a reliable block of time to meet your paid work responsibilities, I would strongly recommend that you find child care, so that you can meet your responsibilities without this depending upon your baby’s sleep.

If your baby is still young, you might prefer to have a baby sitter who comes to your house. We don’t want babysitters to try to entertain baby inside the house though – the babysitter needs to take the baby out on adventures! Even in difficult climates it is possible to take the baby to a shopping centre or a play group or a friend’s house.

Try not to worry about your baby’s sleep. We can trust your baby’s body clock and sleep pressure to take care of your baby’s sleep without you having to try hard. What matters is that the person caring for your baby plans to enjoy the days with your baby outside the home. 

It's tough when you are trying to get paid work done but don't have childcare support to give you the time that you need. If you can't get it done during the day, you might find that you're doing it after baby's bed-time! If that is your situation, and it's not possible to change it, then a great deal of self-compassion is required. But trying to make your baby sleep for big blocks during the day could actually backfire, and make everything even harder, not easier, after a few weeks.